The ‘Just Add Water’ Initiative is a joint project of Encore Green Environmental, Beneficial-Use Water Alliance, and the University of Wyoming’s Center of Excellence in Produced Water Management.

We are interviewing a number of experts about how adding water onto the land of the arid western states changes everything.

So, we thought we’d start with an interview with some vegetation. Now, we know plants don’t talk. But if they could, it’d go something like this:

INTERVIEWER: Thank you speaking with us today . . . uh, do you have a name?

PLANT: I’m just a plant.

INTERVIEWER: Is your first name Robert? Get it? Robert Plant?

PLANT: I don’t get it.

INTERVIEWER: Never mind. Can you tell us what you like to do in your spare time?

PLANT: I don’t have spare time. I spend all day taking in sunshine, releasing oxygen, and sequestering carbon dioxide.

INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us more about this sequestering thing?

PLANT: Underground, my roots and the surrounding soil love carbon. I mean, really love carbon. So, above ground we pull in carbon dioxide and so we can lock it away in the roots and soil.

INTERVIEWER: So, you’re like nature’s vacuum cleaner.

PLANT: I don’t get it.

INTERVIEWER: Never mind. So, you have fun all day sequestering carbon?

PLANT: When I get to, yes. But because I’m a plant in the arid western states, we don’t have much water. Without water I can’t do much. My leaves turn brown. I wilt and there’s not much sequestering of carbon going on.

INTERVIEWER: So, you support The ‘Just Add Water’ Initiative?

PLANT: Yes! All of plants do. Even the trees are getting in the action. Everything changes when you add water. I grow. I sequester carbon. And I can achieve major conservation goals. But you gotta give me water.

So, that’s what the vegetation thinks. What do you think? We’d love to hear from you.